Following Tip O'Neill's too-oft quoted advice, I'm going to take this local. We are set up in such a way here at Ball State that the content areas for teacher preparation are in the content departments, and I have been talking for some time with our English Education faculty about the problem of teaching grammar in the schools. Given the astonishingly strong standards just set out by the Indiana DOE for English language arts in K12, the problem has taken on some urgency, or so it seems to me. However, I can't get much interest from our English Ed colleagues, most of whom support the NCTE positions. I've been suggesting for several years that we need to coordinate better between the content of our English Linguistics course, the grammar course required of language arts teaching majors, and the language arts methods courses that EngEd teaches, but so far I've gotten little more than a polite nod. I'm trying again to get us together, the four linguists who share the English Linguistics course and the three English Ed faculty members, and I think this may happen after the first of the year sometime, but my optimism is muted. I think this is one of the places where the issue needs to be addressed, but there seems precious little interest in doing so. Herb Stahlke Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D. Professor of English Ball State University Muncie, IN 47306 [log in to unmask] >>> [log in to unmask] 11/30/00 06:44PM >>> Maureen, You're on the right track now. We need to develop our pedagogical grammar using the best parts of contemporary learning theory (including multiple intelligences). That's one reason I want us to try to recruit elementary teachers to ATEG. They study pedagogy. They can shed light on why grammar teaching doesn't stick. We know it would be good for every student to have a grasp on the metalanguage of grammar. Elementary teachers, whose job it is to covey this metalanguage to children, might be able to help us find out how to do it. So how do we recruit them? To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/